Museum collections of musical instruments and the reproduction of colonizing approaches with digital tools

Gisa Jähnichen

Authors

Gisa Jähnichen Shanghai Conservatory of Music https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0278-1579

Keywords:

museums, musical instruments, decolonizing, digital representation

Abstract

Ethnomusicology has a reputation of being an engaged discipline that deals with ethical issues. This engagement is subject to dynamic changes embedded in and expressed through discourses on the quality of its knowledge contribution. This paper is dedicated to the many issues coming with internet archives introducing or explaining musical instruments, which contribute widely to simplifications and degeneration of actually available knowledge. One of the problems resulting from that is the re-introduction of colonizing patterns into the ethnomusicological discourse on musical instruments. This paper aims at showing alternatives to this self-infecting practice of re-colonizing academic writing.

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Author Biography

Gisa Jähnichen, Shanghai Conservatory of Music

Prof. Dr., born in Halle (Saale), Germany, currently working as professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, was doing research over more than 25 years in South East Asia. Magister (Bachelor & Master) in Musicology and Regional Studies on South East Asia from Charles University Prague (Czech Republic), PhD in Musicology / Ethnomusicology from Humboldt University Berlin (Germany); Professorial thesis (Habilitation) in Comparative Musicology from University Vienna (Austria). Extensive field researches lead her to Southeast Asia, East Africa, Southwest and Southeast Europe. Together with Laotian colleagues, she built up the Media Section of the National Library in. Gisa Jähnichen is member of ICTM, its Study Group Chair for Musical Instruments, member of the Study Groups on Music and Minorities, Maqam, and Performing Arts of Southeast Asia. She is editor of the book series Studia Instrumentorum Musicae Popularis (New Series), and authored numerous articles and books. She is also the secretary of the Training & Education Committee in the International Association for Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) and an Ambassador of IASA to Asian countries.